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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

Adding to Canada's environmental downfall

The choice President Obama has faced in recent weeks – whether to approve the Keystone XL pipeline – has been framed as a choice between losing the support of environmentalists or alienating America's key ally, Canada. Here's a better approach: President Obama should use the Keystone XL pipeline issue to send a message to Canada that its environmental policies are damaging to both Canada and the world.

Biggest Environmental Rally in Decades

As many as 40,000 protesters from 30 states descended on the White House on Sunday and demanded that President Obama kill the proposed Keystone XL oil sands pipeline. By the estimates of organizers, it was the biggest protest march for climate change action in the nation's history.In about 18 cities from Boston to Los Angeles, thousands more participated in solidarity rallies—and helped garner unusual nationwide media attention for an issue that has typically slipped under the local media radar.

New study to examine health impact of Alberta tar sands

An independent study will soon be launched into the health effects of the oilsands on nearby communities.

Partially funded by the provincial and federal governments, the study will be overseen by University of Calgary sociology professor Cora Voyageur and will re-examine cancer rates in Fort Chipewyan, a native community about 220 kilometres north of Fort McMurray.

Links to other health issues, including autism, will also be explored as researchers try to determine if contaminants from industrial developments are causing illnesses in residents of Fort Chipewyan and Fort MacKay, the native community closest to operations in the oilsands.

Ominous sign for Keystone XL

In yet another potentially ominous sign for TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline, John Kerry used his first major address as secretary of state on Wednesday to make an urgent call for comprehensive action on climate change.

One-sided poll tells the story big oil wants you to hear

After a weekend during which tens of thousands of Americans took to the streets to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline and demand solutions to the climate crisis, the American Petroleum Institute (API) is touting a one-sided poll they claim shows Americans supporting the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline.

However, a closer look at their poll questions unveils a biased survey which failed to equip respondents with the basic facts of the project before asking them to form an opinion. Instead, API crafted a poll to ensure they got the types of answers they were looking for by totally ignoring the environmental and economic realities of the toxic pipeline from Canada.

On February 17, I am joining tens of thousands of people on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., along with tens of thousands more in cities and towns across the nation, in what will be the largest climate action in US history.The Piscataway Tribe has graciously extended a welcome to our First Nation guests from British Columbia, Canada, and to ALL of us. Thank you Chief Billy Tayac and thank you everyone who is descending on Washington, DC, from around the nation for the Forward on Climate Rally!

Solutions for climate change aren’t either/or

Last week, we posted a video interview with Michael Brune, the executive director of the Sierra Club, in which he explained why the organization had decided to break a 120-year prohibition on civil disobedience to protest the Keystone pipeline. In this guest post, Brune shares his thoughts on Sunday’s climate change rally and responds to some of the critics who question whether Keystone is the right focus for the environmental movement right now.

Supporters of Keystone XL outspend opponents

At least fifty oil companies, business trade associations, labor unions, and political groups with combined lobbying budgets of more than $178 million lobbied Washington in support of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline in 2012. And the dozen groups lobbying against the environmentally risky project had 2012 lobbying budgets of less than $5 million total, a ThinkProgress analysis reveals.

Tar sands mining uses up almost as much energy as it produces

The average "energy returned on investment," or EROI, for conventional oil is roughly 25:1. In other words, 25 units of oil-based energy are obtained for every one unit of other energy that is invested to extract it. But tar sands oil is in a category all its own.Tar sands retrieved by surface mining has an EROI of only about 5:1, according to research released Tuesday. Tar sands retrieved from deeper beneath the earth, through steam injection, fares even worse, with a maximum average ratio of just 2.9 to 1. That means one unit of natural gas is needed to create less than three units of oil-based energy.

What will Obama's 'green quarterback' mean for Keystone XL?

U.S. President Barack Obama is poised to nominate his "green quarterback," a longtime air quality expert who has been a champion for tougher carbon emissions standards, as head of the powerful Environmental Protection Agency.Gina McCarthy, who currently heads the EPA's Office of Air and Radiation, reportedly has the inside track to replace Lisa Jackson, who officially stepped down from the agency last week.The 58-year-old McCarthy's ascension proves the president is serious about battling climate change, observers say, and certainly isn't expected to help clear the path for TransCanada's proposed Keystone XL pipeline.

Comments

Stopping the Keystone Pipeline will not stop global warming, nor will building it stop people from driving electric cars or installing solar panels on the homes. OPEC oil is not green. The amount of natural gas which OPEC nations flare is enough to supply the combined needs of Germany and France. And it would be good to end the threat of oil spills from oil tankers.

The bottom issue with this pipeline (also expressed by Mike Mann on his FB page) is that it will widen the bottleneck of Alberta tar sand mining operations, potentially making the operation of retrieval all of that tar sand (including EROI of only 2.9:1) economically viable. The insuing exploitation has the potential of 0.5K global warming.

I would go further with my comment here: this is the investement fosterring more FF extraction. With every infrastructure investment like this, the longer and better it serves its purpose (i.e. the more tar sand oil it tranports) the better its economic return value. We want all investments to have the best returns. But in this case, it is in contradiction to the assertions by scientists that all high-emission FF should be left in the ground.

The issue has nothing to do with your assertions about what OPEC nations are doing or about oil spills from tankers.

The average "energy returned on investment," or EROI, for conventional oil is roughly 25:1... Tar sands retrieved by surface mining has an EROI of only about 5:1

When the entire life cycle of the fuels is considered—including production, transportation and burning the final product— the greenhouse gas differential between conventional oil and tar sands oil is about 20 percent.

How is it that these two quotes are not in contradiction to each other, so that there is a factor of 5 in terms of EROI and only 20% in terms of CO2 emission?

If from conventional oil: EROI 25:1 -> they need to produce 104kg and burn 4kg of it (assuming the process is self bootstrapping at 100% efficiency) in order to sell you 100kg -> their emissions + youres emissions from 104kg of gasoline burning

So the emission difference is 120 - 104 = 16 which is 16/104 = 15% of the conventional emissions.

That 15% is the ideal minimum with a rather simplistic if not silly assumption of 100% efficiency at the refinery. In the real world, due to that efficiency being below 100% and likely the tar sand mining operations sourcing their energy insitu bootstrapping from the "dirtier tar sand", therefore less evnironmentally friendly to start with, the actual figure of 20% more emissions sounds reasonable.

Wow. When someone brought up that API opinion poll I was suspicious of it but I couldn't find the questions to check. I wouldn't have believed that it could be as blatantly biased as that. At least now if ever anyone quotes the results in support of their argument you have definitive proof that they are not genuinely sceptical.

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